Metrics and public reporting are necessary for transparency and accountability to the community. Choosing the right set of indicators that can capture the long-term and multi-faceted outcomes that make a difference to people, business and place is becoming a greater focus in economic development work.
Our white paper, Reflecting Community Priorities in Economic Development Practices, discusses how economic development organizations are developing new program metrics that reflect the quality of their program or project activity. These metrics represent an important change from the job counts, transaction tallies, and investment totals that have characterized much of economic development program reporting to date. The paper also describes steps for aligning metrics with priorities, conducting inclusive community engagement, and avoiding data collection pitfalls.
The upcoming CREC/Smart Incentives roundtable sponsored by the State Economic Development Executives Network will dive deeper into the subject of metrics. We invite you to join us November 9 at 2pm eastern for a discussion on Integrating Equity into Incentive Metrics. Many state and local economic development organizations are striving to make their financing and incentive programs more equitable. Stakeholders are also asking for new metrics and public reporting to assess how well these efforts are working and to understand their impact on communities. The roundtable will bring experts in equitable economic development together with state and local economic development practitioners to discuss emerging approaches to measuring and reporting on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) impacts within incentive programs.
The program is free but registration is required through this link. We hope you will join the conversation.
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